Heartbreak Lover (Broken Hearts Academy #2) - C.R. Jane Page 0,31

darkness threatening like a storm on the horizon.

I’d read every word. I’d read every ugly, awful word. Words that destroyed me. Words that changed the fabric of my soul, twisting it and shaping it into something that it should have been all along.

Hers.

I’d made myself start from the beginning. I’d read about how abusive her mother had been, how much we’d failed her by letting her hide it all from us when the signs should have been obvious to us. I’d read about how she both missed and hated her father, how some weeks, her mother had forgotten to get any food for the house. How sometimes, she hadn’t had electricity or running water, because her mother had spent all their money on booze and spa treatments she couldn’t afford and didn’t need. How hungry and alone Everly had felt. Constantly.

And then I’d read about Everly’s love story with my brother and I.

And it was a love story, just not the kind that Caiden had wanted.

I could feel the worship and veneration about the two of us, how she felt like we’d saved her.

Not realizing that she was the one who’d saved us.

Or at least, saved me.

It was obvious now, reading it after everything had happened, the way that Caiden had manipulated her…manipulated me.

Starting from when he stole her first kiss by lying about my first kiss.

I still remembered that day, about how she’d approached me with tears in her eyes. How I’d tried to tell her what happened, that Marcy had kissed me…I hadn’t kissed her. My pre-teen brain hadn’t understood why she was making such a big deal about something that had meant nothing to me.

But now I understood that Caiden, even at thirteen, had been doing everything he could to make sure that “our girl” was only his girl.

And then I got to that summer. The rage simmered inside of me, her words stoking the flames until they burned out of control.

Had Caiden wanted me to lose control that day in that fight at school?

I remembered that night when I’d come home, and how he’d told me that I almost hit Everly during the fight and that I was too dangerous to be around her.

I’d lied to her that next day. Destroying my angel with cruel words in an effort to save her. From me.

When the person she needed saving from was him.

I read his words to her, how he tore her apart all summer, how he controlled her every move. How she longed for me every second of every day.

Just like I’d longed for her.

By the time I got to that night, the one that changed everything, I could barely control myself.

Her words pushed me over the edge.

I read in disbelief how she’d finally gotten the courage to break it off, the guilt she’d felt. I read about me taking her virginity, something I’d so vilely thrown in her face.

I read about the text from Caiden.

And then I read about everything after that. Including that she thought I’d called her and had tried to scream into her phone for help.

It hadn’t been me.

My twin brother was the devil. And he’d destroyed my sweet, beautiful, perfect Everly. And I’d helped him.

It was like I was the one on the receiving end of every hit from his fist as I read her words.

I wanted to stop right there. I knew if I looked in the mirror, I’d see the black taking over the blue, but I knew that I had to read to the end.

And I did. I read about how alone she was, every fucking day, when she tried to recover from the injuries that Caiden had made to her body. And the injuries that I had made to her soul.

Long after I’d finished her last words, I sat there, thinking about all the time I’d wasted mourning Caiden and hating Everly.

Caiden should have died in that hospital bed.

The words came sharp and fast, and yet I knew that I meant them down to the marrow of my bones.

My brother had spent years of his life, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The truth had been right there in front of me this entire time.

I might as well have been the one in that car with her, for all the damage I’d done.

The way she’d described what I said to her in that hospital room, when she’d just woken up and she’d been all alone, her body and life destroyed.

I screamed, the sound of my pain echoing through the